A Shock for the Elites: Trump Owns the Media — and the Establishment Has Squandered the Credibility to Stop Him

Dec 10, 2015

RUSH: Folks, I am so excited, I have to tell you, I’m so excited. Practically everything I have in my show prep Stacks today is stuff I have already talked about that’s just now ending in the Drive-By Media, just now ending up being discovered in the Republican Party among focus groupers. I mean, it’s incredible, starting out with my brilliant monologue on Monday, it might have been Tuesday. The days are running together.

I did the entire first hour of this program on what is really, really, really at the bottom of all of this angst over Trump is the fact that he owns the media, and it has upset everything. I spent a good part of the first hour of the program detailing exactly why. It was the day after. I guess it was whenever Trump made his comments on a temporary moratorium on Muslims being allowed to enter the country. Everybody was going, “Oh, my God, we can’t say that. Oh, my God, this isn’t conservatism.” Paul Ryan said that. The Republican, the Democrat Party, everybody aligned over here against Trump, and Trump successfully politically maneuvered himself into being the sole occupant of a particular political position, and he did it by controlling and owning the media.

Now today at TheHill.com: “Republicans Fuming Over Trump’s Media Command.” This story is pretty much exactly the point that I made in their own way about that aspect of this campaign, which is profound. Now, I’m not gonna go through that again. I told Koko — I think this is important — I told Koko up at the website, “I want you to go get that link and post it again at the top of the home page as though I just did it.” The days are running together and I can’t remember if I did it on Monday or Tuesday of this week.

I mean, I’ve discussed it every day, but the primary focal point and dissertation, explanation of just what has happened, how Trump owns and controls the media, that despite themselves they can’t not cover him, that his audience is bigger than theirs, that they need him, they can’t not cover Trump if they want to be watched, if they want to be read, if they want to be listened to.

And now, folks, it’s really entertaining. You would not believe some of the stuff I have in the Stack today. For example, the Drive-By Media has sent reporters out all over the country. There’s actually a story here from a bunch of Drive-By people saying they are ticked off. They can’t find anybody who says they will not vote for Trump now because of his Muslim comments. They have searched long and hard. They have gone to the greatest lengths they know to try to find anybody who is mad at Trump, any of his supporters, because they thought this was it, folks.

How many times have they thought this? They really believed that this was going to be the nail in Trump’s coffin. They were convinced. And they can’t find any evidence anywhere that any of Trump’s supporters are in any way upset with him or disagree with him, even. And a hard, cold reality is beginning to settle in on all of these people. You know, the media, this is a very important thing. The media, the left conduct themselves with a moral superiority, in their own minds.

I’ll give you an example. Back in the summer in Indiana, it might have been the spring now, I forget exactly when it was, when they passed their Religious Freedom Restoration Act the media was beside itself. The media was outraged, thought it was homophobic, it was anti-gay, it was anti-gay marriage, and so they sent reporters out all over the state of Indiana and they finally found a little business somewhere, a family-run pizzeria, and they walked in, they said, “If you were asked to cater a gay wedding –“

“No, our religious views would prevent us from catering a gay wedding.” So the media was outraged, and they focused on this poor little pizza family, and they just tarred them and they just feathered them, but the point was they did it under the guise that the entire country was outraged at that little family, and they do the same thing here with Trump. Trump says something like this temporary Muslim moratorium, they get lived, they get outraged, they can’t stand it, and they assume everybody else is. Their moral superiority leads them to believe that they represent the majority thinking in this country. And if they don’t represent it, they can make it. The media has always believed they can make and break people, that they determine the outcome of events. And in large numbers, they’ve been correct. When it comes to Trump, all that’s out the window, and that’s why they’re frustrated.

So they’ve had this moral superiority. There’s not a single sane human being that would agree with Trump. Now they can’t find anybody that disagrees with him. This is the equivalent of a cold shower, a wake-up call like they’ve never had before. It’s a dichotomy for them because over here you have their moral superiority where they believe they represent the majority thinking of people in the country, and if they don’t represent the majority thinking, that they can create a majority of opinion. And now the Trump phenomenon has happened, and they don’t have any of that ability. They realize they’re not representative of a majority of thought in the country and that they can’t convince people to agree with them that Trump is a reprobate. And this is causing absolute, sheer panic. And not just in the media. It’s causing sheer panic in both parties.

Both parties, the Washington establishment, the media is a coequal player, and the media has always been an equal participant at the establishment table, if you will, and the entire establishment cannot use their own media to fix this. And by “fix this,” I mean get rid of Trump. It’s the first time in I don’t know how long that the media has been impotent when it comes to destroying somebody. That’s their hallmark. They want to take somebody out, easy. Want to try take somebody out, go for it. There are only a couple, three instances where they’re unable to do it, and when those instances pop up they never understand why they’re unable to do it. And that’s where they are now.

They just don’t understand. And if they do understand, they’re in a state of denial, but either way they’re panicked and both parties are panicked because none of this makes any sense to them, in terms of the way they think, combined with their moral superiority. The media’s now trying to tell themselves that it’s just their coverage, that even negative media is good media. Now they’re telling themselves that no matter what they do they’re building up Trump. They’re now turning around trying to give themselves credit for what Trump is doing. Because they always must have, in their own minds, this moral superiority.

The bottom line is, they’re out of touch. They can’t believe anybody could believe anything that Trump is saying. They simply can’t believe it. They are shocked and stunned. Well, they might think that a small pocket of people, say, in Mississippi or South Carolina might agree, but they can’t possibly, this just can’t possibly be the case. The story in TheHill.com: “Republicans Fuming Over Trump’s Media Command.” It’s not just Republicans, folks. The media is fuming over Trump’s media campaign and command. And the Democrats are fuming over Trump’s media command. Here’s a quote from an operative from a rival Republican campaign who spoke freely on condition of anonymity.

He said, “I have never seen anything like it. I talked to two reporters yesterday about potential story ideas, and they said, ‘Sorry, I donÂ’t have time. My [blanking] editor is making me cover Donald Trump.’

“The constant media attention has been the main ingredient in TrumpÂ’s lasting popularity. … Even negative coverage can be a boon to Trump, helping to firm up his base of supporters and communicate his wildly popular brand of straight-talking, anti-establishment conservatism that he punctuates with unapologetically outrageous statements.”

Well, they can’t not cover him, is the point. They have to. They need Trump’s audience. If they try to ignore Trump, they’re gonna be harmed business-wise. They will have much smaller audiences even than they have now.

So, anyway, rather than go through this whole thing again — because it took me 45 minutes to go into deep, dark detail over this. It was Tuesday. So I told Koko just to post the link back to that monologue and couple it with everything that we’re gonna add to it today. I mean, it’s just… I’ll give you some of the headlines. “Republicans Fuming Over Trump’s Media Command” is one. Breitbart: “Trump Beat Reporters: We Can’t Find Supporters Who Won’t Vote for Him After His Plan to Ban Muslims.” They can’t find any of his supporters who won’t vote for him.

Do you realize how something like that shakes them up? They’ve always been able to find somebody to tell ’em what they want to hear. But they can’t within the Trump universe. And here’s where it gets really dicey for them. “Plurality Favor Trump’s Muslim Ban in New Poll — A new poll suggests that a plurality of Americans favor a temporary ban on Muslim immigration like the one proposed by Republican front-runner Donald Trump. The survey by conservative-leaning Rasmussen Reports…”

Do we ever hear that CBS/New York Times is “liberal-leaning” in their polling or that the NBC/Wall Street Journal is “liberal-leaning” in their polling? We never hear that. “The survey by conservative-leaning Rasmussen Reports found that 46% of likely voters would favor a policy preventing Muslim immigrants from entering the country until tighter screening procedures can be implemented, while 40% would oppose such a measure.” Another headline: “Majority of Republicans Support Trump’s Muslim Ban.”

That’s CBS, another CBS poll: “Donald Trump Back on Top with Ted Cruz Climbing into Second Place.” From the UK Daily Mail, headline: ‘Trump’s Not Wrong — We can’t wear uniform in our OWN cars’: Five police officers claim Donald Trump is RIGHT about parts of London…” Political correctness has reached London to such extent that police officers are not allowed to wear their uniforms in their cars when they are in Muslim neighborhoods, because it is offensive. So here you have a bunch of London cops agreeing with Donald Trump.

One other thing I just got, and I don’t know where I put it in the Stack. It’s the latest poll out of South Carolina, and that is an important poll, because South Carolina’s considered a bellwether state. Much as the left might despise this, South Carolina’s demographic makeup has been a very good indicator over who the next president of the United States is gonna be. I think South Carolina, if I remember what I read correctly, has only twice in the past 100 years not voted for the eventual winner of the presidency.

And after Trump’s Muslim comments, he is up eight points in South Carolina. I’m telling you, folks, they are just speechless and stunned no matter where you look inside the Washington establishment. The Republican Party, Democrat Party, media, think tanks, you name it. They can’t believe this. And I said yesterday, I have never seen the disconnect like it is today. I’ve never seen the people that run this country, the leaders of our country in Washington — I have never seen in my lifetime, and even in the recent history prior to my birth.

I have never seen or known a period of time where the people in Washington were so detached, disconnected, unaware of the thinking of the majority of the American people, as is the case today. I’ve never seen it. And it’s getting wider. This divide is getting wider. This detachment, this distance is becoming even greater and more stark, and it is just all illustrated here every day more and more in the media coverage of the Trump campaign, or anything else involving Trump. It is genuinely eye opening.

Washington Post. They’ve got a little story here. It’s a blog, PowerPost, called The Daily 202. “Focus Group Shows Why Donald Trump Is Not Going Anywhere.” And this is just one of the many things in the Stack today that basically consists of things I’ve said earlier this week. Frank Luntz, focus grouper extraordinaire: “I’ve never seen anything like this. There is no sign of [Trump’s supporters] leaving. He has created or found the magic formula.” Then they go to the focus group participants themselves.

“Asked about TrumpÂ’s proposal for a ban on Muslim immigration, 17 of the 29 in the focus group backed it. … One big problem for TrumpÂ’s opponents: establishment Republicans hold no sway whatsoever with his base.” Here is the bottom line: There isn’t a single elected Republican in Washington with moral authority sufficient to denounce Trump with credibility within its base. Within its base, the Republican establishment is in such a state of disfavor that there’s not a single one of them there who has the moral authority or credibility to be believed when he or she criticizes Trump or anybody else.

They have squandered that.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: South Carolina poll. It was released Wednesday, conducted Saturday through Tuesday evening. “Trump made provocative remarks Monday about barring Muslims from entering the United States. It looks like his comments help him in South Carolina. Support for Trump increased eight points after his statement — from 30% the first two nights vs. 38% the last two nights” of the poll. “The shift is within the margin of sampling error.” That’s huge. Eight points after the Muslim comments.

Here you have over here the media and the Republican and Democrat establishments, and there’s Frank Luntz at the Washington Post saying (summarized), “Huh. Trump, it’s amazing. He’s come across the magic formula.” There’s no formula here. You know they have a little discussion about how Trump has done this? How is it that Trump owns the media? What has made this possible? How come nobody else can do what Trump does? This is what they’re asking themselves. They can’t explain this.

And then when the Republicans or the Democrats (it doesn’t matter who) send somebody out to condemn Trump, here’s the problem they’ve got: There’s nobody respected enough anymore that has sufficient moral authority to be able to criticize Trump with any credibility. They’ve squandered that. If indeed there was a Republican with the moral authority to be able to criticize Trump and thus damage him, that person would be leading in the Republican presidential primary. But there simply isn’t anybody. And as far as Republican voters are concerned, there’s not a single damn Democrat that has any credibility, moral authority, you name it (certainly nobody in the media), to start criticizing Trump and have that be effective.

And this is what these people had better start understanding, because this represents and means quite a bit. It says much more than just what it says about Trump.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Now back to Trump and this magical formula that he has with the media. Frank Luntz says (summarized), “Yeah, he’s mastered the formula. He’s got this magic formula,” and everybody in the media is trying to figure this out. Nothing is working. Every trick in the book that they’ve ever used that’s always worked to take somebody out is doing the exact opposite with Donald Trump. It’s building him up. And they can’t believe it.

And politicians who have relied on the media to do their dirty work feel even more helpless now, since their army (i.e., the media) can’t take out their enemy. They don’t have the slightest idea what to do. And, my friends, I’m gonna repeat this, ’cause I think it’s a very crucial point. I don’t care who you want to name — and this isn’t meant as a personal or individual criticism. I’m just making an observation. Pick any name of any Republican, or throw any Democrat name you want.

If you want, pick any name from what everybody would agree would be the Washington establishment who’s criticizing Trump and saying, “This is not who we are, and this does not represent American values, and this simply will not stand. This is not who we are and this is not what we’re about, and this is reprehensible and it’s outrageous, and Trump should apologize, and this will not be allowed to happen. This is un-American!” There’s not a single one of them that has any moral authority left to have that mean anything with the American people.

I think this is a crucial point. This chasm, this distance, this divide from the Washington establishment to the people who make this country work? It is so wide, it is so big, that there’s nobody in the establishment that has any credibility any longer. Back in the early nineties and in the eighties and in the seventies, I’ll give you an example: William F. Buckley had the moral authority to determine who was an acceptable conservative and who wasn’t. He had the moral thought because he had the moral authority. He had it because he was credible.

He was trusted, he was honest, and the people on his side knew he was one of them, and he never turned them out and he never betrayed them. All the necessary ingredients for moral authority. As such he was able to banish the John Birch Society. He even succeeded in having Pat Buchanan proclaimed at one point way, way back at anti-Semitic. The point is, there isn’t anybody. I don’t care who. Pick a name. You got Trump over here doing what he’s doing, saying what he’s saying.

The entire Washington establish is like a bunch of parents and grandparents, just in absolute shock. They can’t believe anybody would dare say this, and they’re out there condemning it. But they don’t have the moral authority to pass judgment on Donald Trump, or anybody else. Nor does the media. They’ve squandered it all with the majority of the American people. They have squandered it all with the Republican base. So deep and wide is this disconnect. But if there’s a “magic formula,” I’ll tell you what it is.

Trump goes out and says something that they think is just unacceptable.

He goes out and says something every day, every week, something “totally unacceptable,” something they think is legitimately crazy and insane. They think everybody in the world is going to think what they think, that it’s crazy, legitimately insane, unacceptable. And then they react publicly. The media and the establishment are forced to react to what Trump says, no matter what it is. They believe they have to disagree with Trump, they have to condemn Trump. They can’t dare be seen agreeing with Trump because they think that everybody thinks about Trump the way they do.

And, see, they’re finding out that they are the only ones who think what they think about Trump. They are finding out that they are a real tiny minority. Now, why does the media cover this stuff? They have no choice. Donald Trump doesn’t need the media to reach his supporters. He doesn’t need the media. He’ll use it. Donald Trump gets all of this, he has amassed all of this spending less than $300,000. Jeb Bush so far has spent $25 million. What’s to show for it? Nothing. All of the traditional ways in which you use media to make yourself known and popular have been turned upside down. But the real key ingredient is, Trump’s audience is more loyal to him than the media’s audience is to them.

They don’t own, they don’t possess as much of Trump’s audience as they used to. In a contest, the audience that’s siding with Trump is also abandoning the media, in terms of support, moral authority, and all of that. So no matter what Trump says, no matter how outrageous — in fact, the more outrageous in their minds it is, the better, they have to cover it, because they’re trapped, another reason, they are trapped inside one of their own creations. And that is political coverage, as defined by and practiced by the Drive-By Media, is the horse race. “Who’s winning today? What does the polling data Today show? Did Trump go up today or did Trump go down? Is Hillary up or down?”

That’s about it for Drive-By Media political coverage. And the reason that they have opted for that is because it gave them control over it. The media, in their own minds, controls the political horse race. By virtue of their polling and their daily reporting, they have always thought of themselves as having the power to make or break candidates. Somebody like Todd Akin comes along and says whatever it was he says, the media says, “We’re gonna take him out,” and they did. Somebody like Christine O’Donnell comes out and wins in Delaware, “We can’t have that. We’re gonna take her out.” They did. Sharron Angle, Tea Party candidate in Nevada, “What a kook. What a weirdo. We can’t have that, we’re gonna take her out.” And joining with the Republicans and all three of these candidates, they did. They have this power. They were able to take out Mitt Romney with lies, distortions, and the help of Harry Reid.

This has been what they have become accustomed to, cover the politics of the day as a horse race and be in charge of who wins it. So now they’re covering the horse race, but they’ve lost total control over who wins it. And they’re in abject panic. You add to it the fact that it used to be much easier to do this when they had their media monopoly. But that media monopoly was blown up beginning in the late 1980s with the arrival of this program. There’s a reason why these people in the media and the establishment try to lump Trump with me or vice-versa. Because they also believe they have eternally forever damaged me.

So they think they can do that to Trump. They haven’t. They have not made one impact on this program and me and you, my audience. They have not had one iota’s worth of impact, whether they know it or not. And the fact that they can’t do what they’ve always been able to do with Trump, and the fact that the Republican Party leaders, the Democrat Party leaders have always relied on the media to do this for them, by the way. Now in all three branches of the establishment — Republican, Democrat, media — there is sheer, abject panic.

Because, like this Washington Post story says, Breitbart story, all of these beat reporters from different news agencies, they’ve gone out all over the fruited plain, they have looked for Trump supporters so mad over his Muslim comments that they’re abandoning him. They can’t find a single one. Imagine how they must feel. Ever since Trump made those comments, all they’ve done is impugn, deride, destroy, criticize, whatever you want, they have tried to take Trump out. It’s been nonstop. It’s been full frontal assault 24/7, and not one person has been influenced by it. Can you imagine how they feel.

In fact, what is more likely happening is that with every attempt to destroy Trump, they are strengthening the bond between Trump and his supporters. I don’t know if they’ve realized that yet. And if they do realize it at some point, I don’t know how that will affect or impact their coverage ongoing. Simple little statement, “Donald Trump owns the media,” has just destroyed them. They, for the first time in a long time, feel utterly powerless. And it’s really frustrating ’cause they can’t not cover him. They can’t ignore him. They have to if they hope to have or maintain whatever audience they’ve got now. They’re really in a bind.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Yeah, so Trump goes out and he says things that he knows, by the way, he knows a lot of Americans believe, such as this temporary moratorium on Muslims. He knows a lot of Americans believe it. He knows a lot of Americans would support it. But the media goes apoplectic, the media loses control, the media can’t believe it, and they don’t believe anybody else would agree with. They think everybody would think Trump is a lunatic, a dangerous, insane lunatic. While they’re doing all that, millions of Americans are going, “Finally somebody has the guts to tell the truth.” That’s what I mean about this disconnect. It is so wide, it is so far, it is so deep.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: This moral superiority that the media thinks it has is key to understanding them, folks, and I wish there were a more effective way of explaining my opinion here. I just keep taking stabs at it. When I say “moral authority,” they do believe that they are the smartest, the best and the brightest, the most informed, and they do believe that they are uniquely qualified to proclaim anything good or bad, good or evil, right or wrong, or what have you, and their arrogance is such that they believe that a majority of the American people are just like them.

So it is an arrogance combined with a (phony, by the way) moral superiority, because they really don’t have any. But they strut around thinking they do. So, for example, in that example in Indiana when the little pizza shop owner, a 25-year-old woman, says, “No, we wouldn’t cater a gay wedding,” well, the media just goes berserk! I mean, wherever you tuned, the media went berserk trying to destroy that little woman and her little business.

And they did it all under the guise of moral superiority that made everybody think that a majority of Americans also thought the same thing. It’s part and parcel of the media’s coverage of events. It’s why they are able to so easily destroy the Republican brand when they want to, because they carry with them this attitude that all they’re doing is reflecting majority thought in the country, when in fact they are a very tiny minority of thought in the country anymore.

They represent a really tiny pocket of radical liberalism that they believe is a majority of where the country is, and they believe this because Obama got elected so it must be. They will never acknowledge the phony or negative reasons that people voted for Obama that had nothing to do with agreeing with him or his policies or what have you. So if the media thinks that the country’s racist, they think the country’s racist. They think everybody else agrees with them that the country is racist, and this is how they cover news events.

So here comes Trump, and when Trump gets going on his so-called formula of saying something that the media or the Washington establishment (it’s the same thing) says is just outrageous, just so mean, or it’s so radical, or it’s just so… “Oh, my! You can’t keep a whole religion out! It’s crazy.” They think Trump is over here in a small, little pocket and a tiny number of really crazed lunatic supporters. It’s almost as though they think Trump is operating in a vacuum and that the support for Trump is not real.

It’s hero worship or celebrity worship. They just… They’re not open enough about things to even understand why certain people think what they think, believe what they believe, or act as they do. And all of this has now been exposed by virtue of the Trump candidacy, and in the process he has ended up owning them. He has the media wrapped around his little finger. They are aware of it and just livid and panicked and trying to figure out how to change this. And as far as they’re concerned, the only way to change it’s to destroy Trump.

And the more they try, the more support he gets. The more they try to take him out, the more coffins they try to nail shut with ever increasing number of nails, the higher Trump goes in the polls. It’s just the exact opposite of the way things are supposed to happen when they get into gear. See, the Republicans have been neuterized, so they play along with it. When the media says, “You guys better support amnesty or you’re never gonna win the White House again,” the Republicans go, “Oh, yeah? Okay! We support amnesty.”

And then the Chamber of Commerce comes in with their money and demands. So you end up with no difference in the Republicans and the Democrats, and the Republicans think they’ve bought off the media, bought the media into silence, and the media is used to being able to control people this way. Here comes Trump, and he’s controlling them. I’ve never seen it, folks, in my lifetime. I’ve never seen anything like this. I am relishing it. I am reveling in it. And I’m still in the process of analyzing it and trying to explain it to myself.

It’s that unique. And I appreciate your indulgence and your patience following me along here as I engage publicly here in my open-ended thinking about what the heck is really going on, ’cause I think it is phenomenal and unique. And I think it is… Well, it’s significantly changing the rules here is what I’m looking for, and it holds out significant potential. This, in fact, has always been my dream when all this began, was that the Republican Party would see what’s going on here, and learn from it.

And clearly they aren’t. They haven’t the slightest idea that what’s happening any more than the media does. I mean, they are being taken to school. They are being schooled. They are having it demonstrated for them how to get out of this rut that they are in, and they don’t see it.